


I'm No Good at Writing Love Letters

by thewiggins



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Community: seasonal_spuffy, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Denial of Feelings, Episode: s04e09 Something Blue, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Kinda, Love Letters, Love Potion/Spell, Magical Accidents, Podfic Welcome, Unresolved Romantic Tension, aftermath of the will be done spell, and hate letters if that's a thing, the path to love does not run smooth for these two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21688120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewiggins/pseuds/thewiggins
Summary: Willow's spell has ended, the magic-induced engagement is off, and Buffy is more than ready for everything to go back to normal. But then she finds a letter that Spike wrote while under the influence of the spell.
Relationships: Spike/Buffy Summers
Kudos: 62





	I'm No Good at Writing Love Letters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Fall 2019 round of Seasonal Spuffy. The dual themes were love letters and Something Blue.  
> Thanks to Teragramm for the beautiful banner and to thenewbuzwuzz for her always insightful feedback as a beta!

_I don't know how to write love letters._

_— Frida Kahlo_

Buffy stared, dumbfounded, at the letter that’d fallen out of her Psych 101 textbook and onto her lap. She’d known right away who it was from, recognized both the handwriting and the red ballpoint ink he’d written in. After all, it had only been last night that she’d snuggled into his lap while he made notes for their upcoming (or so they’d thought) nuptials. 

She shoved the letter back into the textbook, snapping the book shut and glancing over her shoulder from where she sat at the desk in her dorm. But she had nothing to worry about. Willow was sound asleep. Between inadvertently channeling powerful magics yesterday and desperately trying to appease everyone with cookies today, she’d been wiped out by the time she’d gotten back to the dorm. She’d crawled into bed at 4:30, claiming to want to close her eyes for a few minutes. But Buffy wouldn’t be surprised if she slept till morning. Willow had a little leeway for this kind of thing, having read far ahead in her textbooks as the quarter began. Which was lucky given how erratic her behavior had been since Oz’s disappearance. But Buffy was hopeful that Willow was finally on the road to recovery. It was herself she needed to worry most about.

‘Cause if Willow had been running low on leeway, Buffy had never had any to begin with. Between slaying and her college-level workload, she spent most of her time overwhelmed and exhausted. She’d barely begun to get into what might be called Professor Walsh’s “good graces” and she had no intention of finding out why Walsh was nicknamed “the Evil Bitch-Monster of Death.” And, since Buffy’s magic-addled self had completely forgotten to study yesterday, she needed this evening to catch up on reading before her morning class. Which made the letter the last thing she needed.

Hadn’t she been through enough: everyone seeing her act all lovey-dovey with Spike, having to fight off hordes of demons, and, oh yeah, Riley thinking she’d been about to get _married_? And how immature must Riley think she was after she'd tried to explain the whole thing away as some stupid joke? At least he seemed to like her apparent zaniness. So far. But she'd have to tell him the truth sooner or later and was _that_ ever a conversation she was not looking forward to having.

She had to admit, one comfortable thing about her (enchanted? no, too romantic) _bespelled_ engagement had been the idea that Spike was already a part of her world. With a normal guy, the most she could hope for was that he stayed safe. But Spike understood the demony stuff, in some ways better than she did. True, that was because he _was_ a demon. At the time it hadn’t seemed to matter that much. But now, oh boy with the mattering. And, god! What was wrong with her? She needed to stop thinking about any part of that engagement as anything but the disgusting perversion of reality it had been. Spike was so very, _very_ much not relationship material. Even if his arms had been strong and comfortable around her, and he had been a good kisser, and—Woah. That was a train of thought that needed to be stopped. By dynamiting the tracks if necessary. There were clearly some leftover effects of the spell going on. And speaking of leftovers...

Buffy hooked the pages of the textbook with her finger and pulled it open, letting it flip to the place where the letter had hidden. What should she do with it? She could shove it into her bag and ignore it. Or, better yet, throw it away. Throw it away somewhere other than the little bin by her desk where it might tempt her into curiosity or, worse, where Willow might find it. So she'd dump it somewhere on campus and never think about it again. After all, Buffy was certain that the letter had been composed under the influence of the spell. Why else would Spike write to her? And when else would he have been unchained for long enough to stash the letter in her Psych book?

So whatever was written there wasn't Spike. It was the spell.

Buffy slid the book into her bag and pushed her chair back, careful to make as little noise as she could. A glance at Willow confirmed that she was still sound asleep, so Buffy slipped into her jacket and out of the door. It was beginning to get dark as she made her way to the common area of Stevenson Hall. The room had one of those big, multi-bin trash receptacles. Good. The letter would disappear into the recycle slot and be gone by morning. She dug it out of her bag but then froze, hand poised above the slot. Argh... This was so frustrating! She just. Couldn’t. Do. It.

It was dumb and wrong but she was so... curious. And, well, maybe there'd been a moment, right after Willow had ended the spell, when Buffy had had this awful feeling. As if her heart had been a bright, floating thing—one of the colorful balloons you got on your birthday as a kid—and someone had come along and popped it, just for fun. So, maybe she wanted to recapture that buoyant feeling. For a moment. Then she’d do her best to forget and get on with life.

Buffy found a quiet spot in the corner by a darkening window, settled into the uncomfortable institutional furniture, and read.

_~~Slayer~~ Buffy,_

_God, you’ve got a ridiculous name for a slayer, you know that? Funny thing is, I think it’s growing on me. Now, I can even see a future where I wake up every morning (or evening—I suppose that’s another thing we’ll need to sort out) with your name the first thing on my lips. A few months ago I wouldn’t have been able to imagine that with anyone but Drusilla. Hell, the me of a couple months back would have thought what we’re doing now was absolute madness. But I’ve always led with my heart, and if that makes me crazy, well, there are worse ways to go off your rocker._

_I’m writing while you’re out picking up ingredients for the spell for your watcher. (And here’s a strange thought, do you think he’ll want me to call him “father” after we’re married? Best not, he seems in shock enough as it is.) I can’t decide if it’s you I’m writing to or myself. I guess I’m hoping that writing this will clear a few things up. For you and for myself. Bleeding stupid. My words have never done me much good. But at least if I get them down on paper I can look at them before you see them. Maybe decrease my chances of totally cocking things up, yeah?_

_It’s been… a strange night. One minute we were fighting and I was so filled with anger and frustration and… and then it was like this bright light washed over me, filling the room. Over you, emanating from you. And I knew. Just like that. _

_That light’s still here, though fainter now you’ve gone. It’s uncomfortable after living so long in darkness. Blinding. But also illuminating. Pushing back shadows in my mind. Why Dru left me, for instance. She picked up on something I hadn’t. She asked why I’d never killed you. And I didn’t understand. I was sure I’d just hit a run of bad luck, combined with an unusually adept opponent. But she’d seen something. The connection between you and me. And now, I think that connection goes all the way back to the start._

_When I first saw you, moving like Salome herself on the dance floor, I had this feeling. This notion that you’d be the ruin of me if I let you. It wasn’t love. Not yet. But there was the chance of it, even if I couldn’t admit it. So yeah, I tried to get you before you could get me. But you never made it easy on me. You were too fast, too clever, too graceful. And each time I came across you I found myself wanting just one more dance._

_And God, Slayer, remember how we used to dance? Bloody poetry. How did we not see the feelings that were developing, right below the surface?_

_I can’t fight anymore, against or beside you, and that rankles me. I get this chip out someday and we’ll dance again. Only this time, I’ll be by your side, not at your throat. We’ll take on the world together, you and me. And I’ll dance any dance you want me to, just as long as I get to stay by your side. Hell, I’ll even dance to "Wind Beneath My Wings" if you’re sure that’s what you want._

_The thing I’m saying is… bloody hell, this is hard. I’ll do what you want, you know. Whatever you want. I mean, I’m still evil, still the Big bloody Bad and all that. But if you want me to live off pig's blood, to not hurt anyone that doesn’t deserve hurting, I’ll do it. For you. Because, the thing of it is, Slayer… The thing I couldn’t say even as I was getting down on one knee to ask you to marry me… I love you. It’s bizarre and it breaks all the rules of my kind and yours. But there it is. I love you._

_And I’m telling you this because… well, I’ll be damned if I know exactly why. I suppose because you deserve it. And considering that you said yes, I have to hope that you feel the same._

_~~Bugger. I’m no good at writing love letters.~~ _

_Forever yours,_

_~~Wil~~ Spike_

_P.S. I’m slipping this into your bag so you can read it sometime when I’m not there to breathe (figure of speech) over your shoulder. I imagine you can tell me what you think about it (and if you feel the same or if I really have buggered things up somehow) when I see you again tomorrow. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the coming weeks as we plan the wedding, needless to say. But… I know that your life and mine can be complicated and our crowds don’t exactly mix well. Besides which, I’m not planning on staying at your Watcher’s flat any longer than I have to._

_So, what I’m proposing is this: there’s a big old oak tree right on the northeast edge of the Quiet Grove Cemetery, not far from campus. I noticed a little while back that it’s got a hollow in the middle where it looks like it must’ve been struck by lightning years ago. Perfect place for hiding messages if we ever have to. You never know when you might need a secret way of getting in touch._

Buffy felt as if she was looking at the letter from a distance away. Her eyes were locked onto the words “Forever yours” and tears were threatening to cloud her vision. God. No one had ever written her a love letter. To get one now from her archenemy, who’d been acting under the influence of a spell… It was crushing. The funny thing was, Buffy believed that the letter had been sincere. At the moment he’d written it, anyway. But, in reality, “forever” had turned out to mean two or three hours between when the spell had gone into effect and when it had ended. To think, they’d both thought they had all the time in the world.

Buffy wondered how she would have responded to the letter if she’d received it while still under the influence of the spell. She’d probably have thrown herself into his arms and said something like, “Oh, Spike! I love you too!”

Love. He’d said he loved her. Of course, it’d been the spell, trying to convince them that it was only natural to get married. After all, who plans on marrying someone they hate? Buffy supposed she must have thought the “L-word” at some point during the spell. But she hadn’t been _thinking_ much at all. She’d just been filled with this certainty that the day she and Spike got married would be the happiest of her life.

Well, she’d known reading the letter would be a bad idea. Now that it had made her miserable(er), she needed to crumple the thing up and do her best to move on. A good night’s sleep and maybe a nice date with Riley would wipe the whole stupid mess from her mind. But… there was something about Spike’s letter that was catching in her mind. Something that didn’t want to let go.

Sighing, Buffy pulled out her notebook and began to write.

* * *

Spike wasn’t able to talk his way into relative freedom until late evening on the second night after the spell. He’d had to persuade the watcher that, what with him being harmless and all, there was no point in keeping him tied up. Spike had gotten no pleasure in making _that_ argument. But he’d known he needed to get out. To stop Buffy from seeing what his spell-affected self had written if he could, and to do damage control if not.

Now, a misty sliver of moon lit Spike’s way as he approached Quiet Grove. He felt like he should be enjoying his relative freedom (if any moment when he had the chip in his head and the commandos on his tail could truly be called free). But he was too caught up in worry to enjoy himself. Spike’s first thought had been to rush straight to Buffy’s dorm on some shoddy excuse of having remembered more about the commandos and find or make some opportunity to nab the letter from her bag. But odds were that he was already too late, and Quiet Grove was between Rupert’s flat and the UC Sunnydale campus. If he found the tree to be empty, he’d at least know that either Buffy hadn’t read the letter or hadn’t found it worth responding to.

The oak wasn't hard to locate, the gash in its center at first appearing to be a stark and barren blackness against its pale bark. But as Spike stole closer he noticed a tiny flash of white sticking out of the trunk: the corner of a sheet of lined notebook paper that’d been folded and stuck into the tree. Swearing profusely under his breath, Spike pulled the note from its hiding spot and flipped it open, reading by dappled moonlight. Some of the lines had been crossed out with a heavy hand, the tip of the pen almost going all the way through the paper. But he could more or less make them out if he squinted.

_Spike,_

_I got your letter, although I bet you’re wishing I hadn’t, ha ha. And don’t worry. I know it was all the spell. You don’t have to tell me that you don’t love me, that you didn’t mean the things you wrote. You weren’t in your right mind any more than I was._

_It was the spell that made me go all gaga at the idea of wedding dresses and cakes and the afternoon ceremony… even knowing that it would all be with you, the very last person I should want any of those things with. As you said in your letter, it was nuts! Funny, how neither of us was able to see that we were under the spell. I mean, you’re all soulless and evil, and if I was going to marry a vampire it wouldn’t exactly be you. ~~Even if it was kind of nice part of the time, wasn’t it?~~_

_And it was definitely the spell that made me think that I’d misjudged you. I didn't forget that you’re evil, but I started to think about it as if that was just one side of you. A quirk, like being into a cappella or collecting sports memorabilia. Like I said, crazy! Even if you had this other side ~~(and you were sometimes surprisingly sweet, like when you offered to help Giles)~~ it wouldn’t excuse the badness. _

_~~You said in your letter that you’d lay off the evil stuff if I asked you to. Because you loved me. But it’s not possible for a vampire to just stop being evil and besides, you don’t really love me. So.~~ _

_My point is, we both know it was a fluke. We weren’t ourselves. We can move on, forget what happened (or at least act as if we have.) But… there was one thing from your letter that’s bothering me… Well, beyond how you compared fighting to dancing. You are one weird vampire, you know that?_

_I guess what I’m trying to ask is this:_

_You talked about a connection between us that went back way before the spell. About feelings developing. About that even being why Drusilla left you? And I know that I was looking at our past through rose-colored glasses during the spell, but it would never have even occurred to me to think there’d been anything but hatred and disgust between us before—I don't know—the chip at the earliest._

_But what you wrote was the spell, wasn’t it? It wasn’t real. Please, please tell me that none of that was real._

_~~Yours,~~ _

~~_Sincerely,_ ~~

_Buffy_

“Bugger, bugger, bugger!” Spike muttered to himself as he finished Buffy’s letter.

He hadn’t remembered exactly what he’d written during the spell, but he’d hoped that it hadn’t been as bad as he’d imagined. But not only had he basically said that he’d been in love with Buffy from near the beginning, he’d managed to convince the no-longer-enchanted Buffy that it might be true!

Sure, some of what he’d said in the letter had been uncomfortably close to reality, but that was how the spell had worked. It'd taken a few true things about his existence—his early fascination with Buffy, Drusilla’s stated reason for leaving him—and blown them completely out of proportion. Well, he’d be buggered if he’d let the slayer think there was a chance that he was _in love_ with her. He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper and a pen he’d nicked from Rupes’ out of a duster pocket and used the flat surface of a headstone to write a quick, vehement note, shoving it into the tree.

There. That ought to clear everything up!

He stormed away from the graveyard, not sure quite where he was going but thinking it might involve Rupert's liquor cabinet. It was only as he was halfway back to the flat that he realized that he’d tucked Buffy’s note into one of the pockets of his jacket. He should toss the bloody thing. But then… In the letter, Buffy had admitted that she’d enjoyed parts of the spell too. There was a sort of vindication in that. He still remembered that warmth that had filled him. That light. Bugger. Yes, Rupert’s good scotch was definitely in his near future. Maybe if he got blackout drunk he could forget all this. Still, he might as well keep the letter. For now.

* * *

Buffy tried to put off checking for Spike’s response as long as she could. She made it as far as her lunch break before she gave Willow some lame excuse and snuck off campus on her own. Her impatience wasn’t because she was, well, worried about what Spike had to say. After all, why worry about what someone you hate thinks about you? It was just— She needed reassurance that nothing from that night had been real so that she could move on with her life, that was all.

Sure enough, her note was gone, replaced by another sheet from the same yellow legal pad that Spike had used to write his first letter. Buffy pulled the sheet open with an impatient tug, the paper making a sharp, snapping noise as she did. This letter was much shorter than the first one.

_Slayer,_ it read.

_I can’t believe you thought any of that might have been real! I mean, please. I was high off my gourd on your wicca’s Love Potion Number 9. Do you honestly think I would have written any of that if I hadn’t been magically roofied?_

_Maybe the spell was just different for me than you because I needed a better explanation for why I was getting hitched. After all, it didn’t take long for you to start ringing the wedding bells for Angel. I loved Dru for a century, was married to her in all but law. But the magic needed me to think that somehow the one I’d be walking down the aisle with was you. _

_So don’t read too much into it, pet. Your desperation for any shred of male affection might have been cute when you were 8, but you’re at an age where it’s getting a little grating, don’t you think?_

Argh! The sentiment might have been a relief, but did Spike have to be such an utter ass about how he expressed it? Oh, who was she kidding, of course he did. He was _Spike._ Buffy flipped his note over and wrote a few lines of her own.

_You’re a pig, Spike. A disgusting, evil, stupid pig. And I’m so, so happy that the spell is over so I don’t have to think about you as anything but repulsive._

_We both know where we stand now. So let’s never, never_ _talk about this again._

Well, Buffy thought as she walked back towards campus. That should take care of that. Now she just had to repress for all she was worth. If her mom could more or less forget she’d dated a homicidal robot, Buffy could do the same for Spike. His first letter, she realized with a stab of guilt, was tucked in the bottom of her slaying chest back in the dorm. She needed to throw the stupid thing away. And she would. Soon. Definitely.


End file.
